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"For sale: One slightly-used Terminator. Still works, minor attitude problems, get it cheap now!' Several sources are reporting that the Terminator franchise is set to be auctioned off just three weeks after another well known franchise, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, was sold for $60 million. The present owner, Halcyon, has filed for chapter 11 after a dispute with a hedge fund that lent Halcyon the money to buy the rights to begin with. The auction will include rights to everything but the first two films.

The third movie was very fairly maligned. Sure, it might have been halfway decent by itself. But as the sequel to Terminator 2, which was basically perfection in action movie form, merely decent isn't enough. It completely shat all over the "they finally beat Skynet and saved humanity!" thing, the characters weren't as well developed, the story didn't have as much depth, it wasn't nearly as tight (T2 advanced the plot in basically every scene and certainly didn't put any to waste), the Terminator in it wasn't really likable (T1's was an unstoppable killing machine; T2's was an unstoppable killing machine with a heart of gold; T3's was just a dick), the action wasn't as good, and the movie simply had overall a significantly different (and worse) feel from either of the previous ones.

Apparently Arnie wanted to overdub the German version himself because he speaks German but the directors wouldn't let him because his Austrian accent would have made the Terminator sound like a German farmer.

I think you misspelled "the fourth one was the most franchise-destroying, poorly-written, poorly-directed, poorly-acted, absolute failure of a film of all time, and McG should have committed ritual suicide in a futile attempt to atone for his sins." It's an easy mistake to make.

T1 hammers home the point you can't change shit. Arnie comes back and a protector follows ensuring the birth of Cyberdine and of john connor. T2 is the exception implying they can change things but they don't. T3 continues with the original vein of not being able to change anything, it's going to happen. So I'm not sure what gave you that impression with the series...

Dude, did you even see the first movie? Why did you decide 'the basic message of series' was that you can change your fate? That held for maybe one movie, although it was really just them being optimistic.

Trying to make sense of the time travel 'rules' in Terminators movies is stupid.

The most logical assumption is that you can, in fact, change the future, but you can't change 'fate'. No matter what you do, you always have a Skynet and you always have John Connor fighting it and sending people back.

That's actually an interesting question. I believe that they digitized Arnold after the third movie and they used a computerized model of him in the last one. So if someone purchased the franchise, do they also own the digital Arnold?

from the same camp which some of us are sure that there are only three Indy films.

I would prefer it to die, considering that since the second movie, what have we gotten? If it were not for a certain actresses connection to another cult fave who would have put up with the series? That was jump shark city.

There was a coherent plot. Or rather, there were several coherent subplots, which wove together in a fascinating and (IMO) very believable way. This took more than five minutes to develop, and didn't involve misplaced Transformers with motorcycles in their legs, so a lot of people might have missed it.

My problem was that the show had too many subplots that were not, in fact, coherent. At the very least, the coherence developed too slowly for the show to remain on the air long enough to piece things together. If too many people miss the point, the show gets canceled. I find Heroes suffering from the same thing - lack of a clear direction for at least the past season and a half. Sarah Conner Chronicles had a lot of untapped potential, which should have been tapped early enough to keep it on the air. T

And the reason for that, is because the people making the series never know when somebody with a ratings sheet is going to either cut them off short or announce that they have to do an entire third series. Decent pacing is hard enough when you know how many episodes you're going to make. It's far harder when the number could double at any moment.

The writers for T:TSCC were desperately trying to avoid writing themselves into a corner. And they actually did a pretty good job, imo. Look at Battlestar Galac

They kind of deliberately broke everything in the series finale. A third season of TTSCC would have been great, but if they were going to make one, the second season would almost surely not have ended the way it did. It's kind of hard to see how the series would go from the season ending they made -- or rather, it could certainly go on, but it would really be a completely different show.

It would be a very different direction for the show sure (IMO it would be what the fourth film should have been), but it still had all the main characters and the unusual premise of John not even being a famous leader in their universe. If they released the plot as a book I'd definitely get it..

I would prefer it to die, considering that since the second movie, what have we gotten? If it were not for a certain actresses connection to another cult fave who would have put up with the series? That was jump shark city.

James Cameron's canon ended with T2. Although it's not shown in the film, at the end of the T2 novel, Connor and the Resistance succeed in beating Skynet.

Sarah dies in that novel as well. She was with John almost up until the end of the war; it was only at about the second last engagement with the Machines, where she is killed on a supply run.

Cameron refused to be involved with T4; he made the comment that he'd said everything he wanted to say by the end of T2.

The only real reason why Connor's Resistance is able to beat Skynet in the T1/T2 scenario, is because in that scenario, Skynet remains the sole sentient, or close to sentient AI on the face of the planet.

In The Matrix, of course, by contrast, there was a scenario where the acorporeal AIs begin to outnumber the humans very rapidly.

We see a scenario like that beginning to develop in SCC, however, with Cromartie and Weaver. It becomes obvious that some

It's not shown at the end of the second film, but it is explained right at the start of the first film if you pay attention.

It clearly says that the final battle would be fought here...tonight.

Now, if Skynet had killed Connor retroactively, that would have been the final battle of humans, but that didn't happen, so that's not what it was talking about.

No, Skynet only sends the terminator back because it lost. Human burst in, and it fired up the experimental time machine and it sends two terminators back. One to 1984 and one to 1995. (If you think about which was sent where, and what Skynet had to have know about each time, you'll realize it makes sense. Remember the first one managed to kill two Sarah Connors.)

The humans quickly send Reese back, and then they quickly reprogram the other Arnold that's laying around and send him back too.

Perhaps this was two different battles, or two different facilities, but anyway, the point is, the time machines were, essentially, the last stand before Skynet was defeated. (Logically, you don't want to let your enemies have access to your time machines, so they'd be almost as well protected as yourself.)

I suspect that Skynet figured out altering the past was just as big a threat to it as anything else, hence the time machine being used only when it about to be defeated.

If you're wondering about T3, that actually took place in a different future, after T2 moved judgment day. (Which means that Skynet was right about time travel being a threat to it, as the Skynet from the first two movies is essentially dead, or rather never existed.)

Wait a second, there ARE only three Indy films. Why do you mention that fact like it's some sort of controversy? But I can understand how people could get confused. Lead actors occasionally play other roles.

I do remember the MacGyver spinoff that Harrison Ford starred in, "crystal head" or something. I understand that some people think that had something to do with the Jones franchise, since Ford was the lead character in all the Indy films.

But that's just confusion on their part, same as someone thinking that there was more than one "Die Hard" movie just because Willis starred in some other flicks, or that there are more than three Star Wars movies.

PS: I'm not sure what they are selling off. There are really two Terminator films.

Maybe they are trying to sell off "Summer Glau Show" off as part of the Terminator franchise (in which, if I could understand the plot, has something to do with her being a Terminator. I'm not entirely sure, though, because people keep blathering and getting on screen and sometimes blocking a clear view of her.) If so, that show can come back. Keep her and the mom, drop the young dude who appears to be Anakin Skywalker as a kid or something (boy genius who whines a lot about some destiny). Might sell a few ads on an off night and pay for itself if they don't try to spend too much time developing a cohesive plot or special effects that aren't wardrobe-related.

Dollhouse started slow, but I think it's grown steadily more interesting. That's the way a lot of Whedon's work is for me, actually. Buffy hooked me right away, but Angel and Firefly both took a while. (In the case of Firefly, I got really dedicated to the series just about the the cancellation rumors started solidifying...) So at this point I kind of assume that when I tune into a new Whedon project, it will be worth waiting for the good stuff.

For me, Dollhouse started slow and never got moving. I find there's virtually no character development or interaction of any interest. No greater story arc to keep me interested. After seeing "Epitaph One", my first thought was that I wish the show had been set in that time period, unraveling the past over the course of a season. That might have been interesting.

Buffy never appealed to me, but obviously a lot of people disagree with me on that one.

What's wrong with idea for "Terminator: The Musical!"? I think that's the best idea ever to come out of Joss Whedon! With hit songs like "I'll be Bach!" and "Hasta la vista, baby, baby, baby!" how can it possibly fail?

That's what I thought they should have done with the "Alien" franchise after the second one. They already had the haunted house movie and the war movie, the next obvious step was the buddy cop movie and the musical. Oh, and "Aliens on Ice" (they don't even need skates...)

The U.S. government, specifically Tim Geithner, also invested some $2.3 billion [businessinsider.com] in a company destined for bankruptcy, CIT. The U.S. treasury was the lender of last resort and should have secured their investment by insuring they were the first to be repaid in event of bankruptcy, instead they didn't secure it at all so other less senior lenders get 70% back, the U.S. tax payer apparently got shafted out of the entire 2.3 billion.

Maybe in that case as in Halcyon's, since it was someone else's money they wer

The winner of the auction does not get the rights to any profits from the first two films.

The winner does, on the other hand, get the right to do anything else with the rest of the entire franchise.

As I understand it, that could include sequels to Terminator: Salvation or the Terminator 3 plotlines, continuations of the Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series, or entirely new series based in the universe. From the sound of it, they're even selling off licensing rights to all of these properties.

Still worthless, you say? According to TFA, the last time the Terminator franchise rights were sold, they went for $25 million. The purchaser used the rights to make Terminator: Salvation, which grossed $380 million worldwide. Not so bad.

(On the other hand, it's maybe worth noting that the rights to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles auctioned for more than twice what was paid for Terminator...)

I guess they could make a movie about going back in time to Terminate the making of the third and forth. And they could end it with someone finding the remains of the script for the third movie (the one the heroes used to figure out who the producers were, etc) burning in the wreckage of a movie studio, and deciding to make a movie based upon that script.

But since it would be a sort of spoof, I'm not sure you'd actually need the rights to make that movie.

A movie that costs $200 million to make means that before it made it to the theater the producers & friends made $100 million.Most of the companies paid during the production of a movie are owned by the parties making the movie.

Yeah, Hollywood is notorious for shady accounting practices. But these involve sticking investors for one movie with expenses from another, or keeping payables on a separate schedule from receivables. That's not what's going on here: the movie didn't last long in theaters (the show I went to was practically empty) and there's no question that grosses were "disappointing". Conceivably the production costs are inflated, but I doubt it — this kind of movie is not cheap to make.

(By way of comparison, Little Miss Sunshine grossed about $100 million, a 1/4 of the gross for Salvation. But LMS only cost $8 million to make.)

They'll make some money from disc sales and merchandise tie-ins. But the big payday for this kind of movie is long lines at the theater, and it just didn't happen in this case. Oh yeah, and Halcyon was notorious for litigation even before they sued their partners in this movie, so expect the lawyers to take a big chunk.

The auction will include rights to everything but the first two films.

I don't get it. Why would someone pay for rights that exclude everything of value?

Maybe if you think you can somehow inject more value back into it, then trying to get hold of the franchise for a bargain price might be worth a little effort and expenditure in the long run.

Or, more likely, it'll be bought by someone who has no bright ideas or plans. They'll sit on it until other people have bright ideas (given the franchise still has a following and the first films are still held in the high esteem they are, people are going to be thinking about it) then sell/lease the rights to them for

I think the 3rd film gets an unfair bad rap. Yes, it is very different in tone than the first two films--much darker and more fatalistic. And it's set in a different timeline than the first two, it's true. But I like that someone took a different tack with it. If Mostow had just done a knockoff of the Cameron films, he would rightly be called to task for it. So he at least decided to go a different route (Screw that "Future is what we make it" optimism!). Yeah, the comedy bits were a bit overdone, but how c

Homeowner: That's a robot we've had down in the basement for a couple years now. Has an interesting history. Supposedly, it was thrown together by an unknown, but obviously brilliant computer scientist [wikipedia.org] as a work project. Shame about what happened to him.

Supposedly after he'd finished building the thing, it got loose. There was this shotgun toting psycho of a woman [wikipedia.org] who the police found raving and screaming about how it was trying to murder her and her kid [wikipedia.org]. The police had a hell of a time taking her into custody; they've kept her sedated and locked up in a padded cell ever since.

Customer: Sounds like an amazing story! How much do you want for it?

Homeowner: (Slowly, pausing) $60 million.

Customer: WHAT?! But anyway...if anyone was even going to remotely consider paying that kind of money for it, it'd need to be able to do something beyond awesome! So give me a demonstration! How do I turn it on?

(Finds an old car battery and some jumper cables nearby, as other items for sale)

Hey, this'd work!

Homeowner: I'm not sure that's such a good idea...

Customer: It looks like just a kid's toy! Except a bit bigger of course. I'm sure it's perfectly safe!

If he has the cash lying around, he should totally buy the franchise and turn it into something halfway decent.... or bury it.
Too bad the buyer doesn't get the first two films. They were the only part of this franchise that were actually good.

I remember reading something where he said he passed on T3 because he couldn't see a good story. The guy might be one of the biggest assholes in Hollywood, but I'm grateful that he didn't just do it for the cash.

To Halcyon (Re:Terminator),
I would like to purchase your rights to the Terminator franchise. I hereto offer you two full and unused pockets full lint and or little bits of string. I feel that having seen the last set of movies, this is more than a fair bid. I'm willing to throw in up too, but not exceeding, one full fist full of dryer lint as a good faith payment.

PE is trying to raise a quarter of a million dollars, which is probably a reasonable goal for a band with their name recognition, and will be enough to produce an album. Raising a thousand or ten thousand times as much, a couple hundred bucks at a time, just for the rights to make a movie or a TV show? It's a nice idea, but I don't think it's likely to happen.

And even if it did happen, what would we do with it? There'd still need to be a guiding force, someone running the project. Good luck getting all

"Rebooting" popular franchises is all the rage these days in Hollywood. The Terminator franchise, despite the lesser acclaim of the last two (although they were still both quite profitable), is still a valuable brand with a built-in audience. This means all anyone has to do is go to any random studio in Hollywood, tell them "I have the rights to the Terminator franchise and I want to make a new movie that 'reboots' the franchise" and they'll have to spend the next 6 months just counting all the money they'll be showered with.

What they need to do is to combine franchises. I'm anxiously awaiting the Alien vs. Terminator movie, myself. Its set in the future after the Terminators have wiped out all of the humans. Tag line: Alien vs. Terminator: Who ever wins, we're already dead, so we don't give a fuck anymore. It's going to be huge!

What about Terminator vs. Predator?Terminator vs. Mothra?

Now if only we could get Disney in on the action... imagine the possibilities: